Revision as of 15:49, 26 May 2015

Combat System

M2’s Combat System (hereafter referred to as just the ‘csys’) is a system which is designed, at its heart, to aid roleplaying - thus, it is a simple, yet open-ended system to resolve conflict. M2’s combat system is designed to also be fast - rather than players bogging down in a complex system, the combat is designed to be quick, action-filled - just like mahou shoujo should be!

The combat system itself revolves around the concept of Drive. Drive represents the strength of your beliefs, the power you can put forward into attacks - deep down, all combat on M2 is a battle of emotions, ideals, and willpower - even if that combat may take the visible form of pink laserbeams and dark energy.

Each character begins combat with a small amount of Drive, and through their actions, gains or spends Drive each round. Lower level attacks provide drive, while higher level attacks spend them. The highest level attack, an Iconic attack, spends all of your Drive to unleash a powerful attack - think Moon Princess Halation or Divine Buster.

Attacks on Mahou MUSH are not coded by your character, and thus you are free to pose and free-form your attacks, from the 0-tier Drive boosting attacks to the mightiest of iconics.

Getting Ready

Before you can begin combat, however, you need to ensure that you’re ready! And the command for that is very simple! +ready

• +Ready command

• +ready fully heals your character, and sets their Drive to the correct amount to begin a new battle.

+Attack commands

Barring special circumstances, each character is allowed to make a single attack each round. (Characters fighting many opponents at once may have more attacks, if they’ve elected to utilize the Threat system, which will be described later.)

In order to make an attack, the following syntax is used.

+attack Attack Tier/Target=Name of Attack

For example: +attack 2/Jadeite=Prism Music

Attacks range from tiers 0 through 4, and damage increases as the tiers do. Tier 0 and 1 attacks do light damage but allow the attacker to gain drive, and tiers 3 and 4 spend drive for much higher damage ratios. A tier 2 attack neither costs nor gains drive.

• A tier 0 attack earns 2 drive on a success.
• A tier 1 attack earns 1 drive.
• A tier 2 attack breaks even.
• A tier 3 attack has an initial cost of 1 drive.
• A tier 4 attack has an initial cost of 2 drive.

Making a successful attack in a round also earns you 1 drive. Even if you have more than one attack available to you in a round, you can only gain 1 drive each round via the ‘successful attack’ bonus.

Importantly, all drive gained during a round, whether the bonus drive for a successful attack or the drive gained by using a low tier attack, only applies to the character at the end of the round.

If you have access to multiple attacks in a round, the Drive gain from attacks is lowered to an average of the drive gained versus the amount of attacks you use in a round.

Iconic Attack

Iconic Attacks represent the biggest power a character can muster; Sailor Moon’s Moon Princess Halation, Nanoha Takamachi’s Divine Buster, and the like. In order to use an Iconic attack, a character is required to have a stock of 8 or more Drive. Additionally, no matter how much Drive a character has, using an Iconic Attack burns through all of it. For each point of Drive above 8, the damage of an Iconic attack increases further; secondarily, Iconic Attacks punch through both Defense and Dynamic Defense, making them harder to resist (again, based on the amount of Drive spent on the attack.)

In order to make an Iconic attack, the following syntax is used.

+attack I/Target=Name of Attack

For example: +attack I/Jadeite=Negative Heart, LOCK ON!

+Defend

Of course, with attacks come the necessity of defenses, which also flows from a simple command.

+defend Attacker

For example: +defend Amu

It’s also possible to forgo any defense at all, electing to take an attack at full damage, using a similar command:

+nodefend Attacker

For example: +nodefend Amu

+DynamicD (Dynamic Defend)

Much like attacking, you can also elect to spend Drive to enhance the effectiveness of your defense; this is called Dynamic Defend and the syntax is as follows:

+DynamicD Drive Spent/Attacker’s Name

For example: +DynamicD 2/Amu

Dynamic Defense increases the effectiveness of your defense relative to the amount of Drive you expend - the more Drive you invest into the defense, the stronger it will become. However, spending large amounts of Drive on defense may well leave you without the Drive you need to use an Iconic Attack.

There are two advanced commands beyond the core three, +protect and +teamattack.

+Protect Command

+protect is used to defend another player from an attack, investing your Drive towards their defense. The Drive spent on +protect will usually be of less value than they would get from directly defending themselves with the same expenditure, however. It is generally considered poor form to spam the +protect command; it is designed for moments of high drama and heart. In any case, characters should not receive more than a single +protect command in a given combat, and any single character should not USE the +protect command more than once in a combat.

+protect Drive Spent/Protected Character=Attacking Character

For example, if a character wishes to defend Amu from Jadeite’s Dark Blast: +protect 2/Amu=Jadeite

You must spend some Drive on a +protect action - defending others requires at least a small investment!

+Round Command

Once all the players have finished their attacks and defenses, any player can invoke the +round command to begin the new round. It is common courtesy to give players warning in OOC before advancing to a new combat round. When the new round starts, players will be given the new round’s Drive, plus Drive gained from attacks and the like. If the +round command cannot complete, it will inform the room as to the reason.

If you, for whatever reason, have attacks still available but do not wish to make them, you must use the +pass command to forfeit the attacks for this round, otherwise the +round command will not advance.

+Teamattack commands

The last advanced command is +teamattack, and it is really three separate commands. It represents the ability of a group of characters to deliver one powerful combined attack. It is generally a good idea to discuss the attack with the people you intend to join it, since the leader must name it. Team Attacks cost Drive, and each player who joins can spend a maximum drive equal to the amount the leader spent minus one. For this reason, the leader must spend at least 2 Drive to begin a Team Attack.

To begin a team attack, the leader of the team attack uses the following command:

+teamattack/start Drive Spent/Target=Attack Name

An example, Cure Sunny begins a team attack on Joker which will be joined by Sailor Mars and Sky Jack: +teamattack/start 4/Joker=Sunny Fire Phoenix Shot

Other characters joining in use a secondary command, +teamattack/join Drive Spent/Target=LEADER

For example, to join the attack, Sky Jack and Sailor Mars use: +teamattack/join 2/Joker=Cure Sunny

Once all of the participating players have joined the attack, the attack leader (the person who began the attack) unleashes the attack with +teamattack/done target

In our current example, this command would be +teamattack/done Joker

When a team attack is finished, it is treated by the system as a single attack from the leader of the team attack (so it is defended against in that manner) with the combined power of all of the participant’s spent Drive. The damage dealt by a Team Attack can be quite variable (and high!) depending on the Drive spent and the power of the participants. The nature of a team attack, however, means the defending target need merely make a single successful defense (or dynamic defense) to successfully protect themselves. Additionally, Team Attacks do not possess the defense-breaking ability of Iconic attacks.

Team Attacks should not be a common thing, and only used for their dramatic effect (or to finish off particularly stubborn youma!) - much like in the theme source’s shows, not every attack is a team attack!

'+Threat Command

Often, villains and youma (and occasionally anti-heroes!) in magical girl find themselves staring down a team of magical girls arrayed against them. In order to keep combat somewhat balanced and fun in these circumstances, the +threat command exists.

Using the +threat command will increase your strength, in intended proportion to the number of enemies arrayed against you. For example, if Nephrite is facing a combined group of four magical girls, before combat begins (but after he inputs his +ready command) he should use the command as follows:

+threat 4

This will ‘scale up’ his abilities, as shown below, in order to make him a more appropriate target for 4 characters.

If Nephrite is teamed up with Wolfrun against four opponents, both of them should scale themselves to Threat 2.

When a character is enhanced by the +Threat command, some things will change.

• The character’s passive Drive generation is slightly increased.
• The character gains an increased number of attacks per round.
• The character gains an increased Resolve pool.
• The character’s Iconic unlocks at a higher level of stored Drive (usually 8+Threat Level) and the bonus damage from the Iconic’s Drive expenditure is slightly lowered, based on the character’s increased passive Drive generation.

In certain rare circumstances, it may be appropriate to showcase a character’s power by increasing their Threat above the number of characters arrayed against them - however, doing this requires permission from all of the other characters involved in a scene.

Note that normal characters do not possess a threat level. Threat Level 1 is instead reserved for situations such as a single hero fighting a sufficiently powerful villain - that being said, such situations are likely far better handled with a consent based scene!

Youma System

The Youma System allows you to set a form to represent a youma, or monster of the week, or an NPC. It is not to be used to represent a new henshin- remember, upgrades to your character should be handled via a +request, or an E-mail to MahouMUSH@gmail.com. While there are no hard limits set in the Youma System, we ask you keep between a total of 60 points between the two stats. A little over is okay for Youma, but not too much. The commands are as follows:

+youma/name <name>: Set your Youma's Name. It also sets some basic setup items in the background, so it's important to name your youma!

+youma/spirt <#>: Set the Spirit (Offense) of your Youma.

+youma/heart <#>: Set the Heart (Defense) of your Youma.

And that should be it. Typing +henshins will reveal that your 'Y' slot has been filled. To change your youma, merely use the commands again at a later date.